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America is in an invidious position.
The world criticizes it for its interventionist approach to international security issues (ie suggesting it should keep its nose out of other people's business), but at the same time expects it to do all of the hard yards, for the good of all, in relation to such matters as space research.
The fact is that for many years the US has contributed to the world's knowledge in terms of space research and development to an extent completely out of proportion to its relative population size, regardless of whether that contribution has been borne out of Cold War anxieties or domestic security concerns, or for more altruistic reasons.
As China, Japan and India increasingly look to space, and the US economy faces a deep recession, that the US would look to more cost-effective ways to harness its knowledge and technology is entirely reasonable and predictable.
It is surely naive to imagine that NASA has ever had a free hand, or that its work is somehow apolitical. The huge budget NASA runs on has to be justified to Congress, and so, like all science, practical application and national prestige have always been underlying raisons d'etre. The Cold War led to the Apollo Missions, one just has to remember some of JFK's speeches on this issue.
I like others think it will be a shame if NASA's agenda is increasingly militarised because knowledge and technological developments may not be made so freely available to other nations. However, on the other hand, it is often said that war is the mother of invention, and perhaps the sharing of rocket technology will hasten US space exploration efforts.
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